L’Observateur : Can You See the Number in the Circle? Edition

One of the classes I teach is information design, and the textbook we use has a section about how designers should consider the color blind, and this week one of the students in my class looked at the color-blindness test in the book and realized she is, which is a real bummer for an art school student.

Whoever lives upstairs has been listening to Bill Callahan’s Woke On a Whaleheart really loudly lately, which I find remarkable for a variety of reasons, but mostly because Maine man Ben Plimpton recently asked me to perform a version of “Running the Loping” off that album at his wedding in August. So now I can just play and sing along with the neighbor’s stereo. How convenient.

The other night at the international pick-up basketball game (where the participants are wont to don complete top and bottom NBA uniforms), a dude showed up wearing a Steve Nash set and it was the first time I have ever seen a black man wearing a white man’s jersey.

Parisians have the peculiar habit of abruptly turning in the opposite direction when they are walking down the sidewalk. I experience this on a near-daily basis, and most often the person I see doing it also happens to be the person who is walking directly in front of me – and then into me.

I saw a very old woman standing in the middle of a crosswalk talking to herself through a bloody nose, which was dripping profusely onto the pavement. Everyone just sort of stood there and stared at her and it made me sad because if I spoke functioning French, I would have at least made sure she was okay. Then she turned around and walked the other way.